Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I)
United States Supreme Court
347 U.S. 483 (1954)
This consolidated case combined challenges from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, in each of which Black children (plaintiffs), including Brown, had been denied admission to white public schools under state segregation laws, arguing the segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Brown's Kansas case, first filed in 1951 against the Topeka Board of Education (defendant), was decided against Brown by the district court, which relied on Plessy v. Ferguson's separate-but-equal doctrine. The Supreme Court granted certiorari across the consolidated cases.
Whether the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even where physical facilities and other tangible factors are equal, deprives minority children of educational opportunities in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.